Job Interviewing for Humans

“Liz, do you have any behavioral interviewing questions you like?” asked my friend Cara, a hiring manager. “I can’t help you, I’m afraid,” I told her. “I hate that behavioral interviewing stuff.” “You do?” she asked. “I thought it was the latest thing.”

“It was the latest thing, in 1993,” I said. “Maybe it was 1988. I can’t remember. I sat through endless classes on that junk back then, when I was a baby HR manager. I drank a lot of behavioral interviewing Kool-Aid, sad to say. Past performance is the best predictor of future success, and all that nonsense.”

“Is it nonsense?” asked Cara, incredulous. “Cara,” I said, “let me ask you this. Your kid stuffs a sock down the bathtub drain, so you call the plumber. You don’t know this plumber. You’ve never hired him before. Do you say to the plumber on the phone, ‘So, can you tell me about a time when you got a sock out of a tub drain?'”

Cara chortled. “I wouldn’t. What would you do instead, on the phone with the plumber?” she asked. “I’d tell the guy ‘I think my kid put his sock down the tub drain. How do you usually deal with that?'”

“Ooh, so you’d ask him about the actual situation, instead of something from his past,” Cara observed. “Cara,” I said, “it is only the treat-people-as-mechanical-objects-at-work frenzy of the past fifty years that would ever have gotten otherwise sane and reasonable adults to ask one another insulting questions that begin with Tell Me About a Time When. For thousands of years before that, anyone who was interested in hiring anyone else to mill his grain or shoe her horse, or whatever, would say ‘I’ve got this grain to be milled’ or ‘I’ve got this horse that needs shoes, what do you think?’ I mean, it’s obvious, unless you’re into the command-and-control fear-based way of thinking.”

“The what?” Cara wanted to know.

“This is the thing about W-2 employment,” I told her. “We have made it different than unclogging someone’s tub drain for one day, as an entrepreneur. We have turned it into an unequal, keep-your-head-down kind of servitude. It’s all about power and control, as soon as W-2 employment enters the picture.”

“And the behavioral interviewing questions…?” wondered Cara. “Here’s what they do,” I said. “First of all, they cement the notion that the employer is the one making a big decision in this interview, that the interviewee’s job is to please His Majesty (or Her Majesty), the employer.

What about the job-seeker? He or she has a big decision to make, too.”

When we sit in a job interview with the banner “Are You Good Enough to Work Here, Bucko?” hanging in the air above the interviewee’s head, we change the air quality in a way that isn’t good for anyone.

On top of that, asking a job-seeker to sit in a chair and tell stories about solving problems in other companies with different situations and sensitivities than yours — that’s a horrible way to determine whether he or she could make things happen in your shop.

We should be asking the applicant, “What would you do about situations X or Y?” and laying out what we’re actually dealing with in our departments. If that requires sharing some things we’re not proud of or things that haven’t worked perfectly, the sky will not fall in. We’re allowed to be human. Whomever you hire is going to find out where the termites live in your building, in a very short time. Why play games with that person now?

If you put a live situation in front of a candidate, you’ll be amazed at the questions he or she asks you back. His or her questions will tell you a ton more about how s/he thinks than answers to your scripted questions.

Here’s an example. You’ll ask “So, what are your thoughts on this problem? We go to trade shows and pile up the sales leads – so far, so good. After the show, we come back with the leads, but the inside salespeople are already swamped taking care of existing clients, so they tend to make the new leads a low priority.”

One job-seeker might say “Well, you could hire more inside salespeople.” Not a ton of insight or intellectual curiosity showing in that reply.

Another one might say “There’s a feature on Salesforce that puts low-priority new clients into your call schedule, a few at a time.” (I invented that feature just now.) That’s a mechanical suggestion – but wouldn’t it be nice if the candidate had a bit more perspective (and understood the need to get perspective) on your obstacle?

A third candidate might ask, “Okay, let me understand – what is the inside salesperson’s primary target? What about the outside folks – when does a new lead come onto their radar screen?” The curious candidate will want to know more. They’ll ask about context, background, goals, and a hundred other things. That’s good. Scripted questions and scripted answers are bad, because you don’t get to see any of that juicy stuff happening.

“The questions a person asks you show his or her brain working,” said Cara. “Voila,” I said. “Consultants ask questions. You can tell whether or not they understand your life and your problems by the questions they ask. You can see the wheels turning as they interview you. We should let job-seekers interview us, too. Our fear of what might happen if we didn’t control the interview keeps us glued to the script.”

“This is a whole new perspective for me,” said Cara.

“Here’s one more thought,” I said. “When you ask scripted questions of any kind in a job interview, you close wonderful conversational doors all over the place. Slam! Slam! Slam! The conversation might have gone into all kinds of interesting places, but you didn’t let it, because you had to get through your list of interview questions.”

“I can interview people without a script?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “I will get into that another time. If you need a conversational starter until then, how about this one: ‘So, tell me what you think about this role and about the company based on what you know so far! After that, we’ll dig into where we need help right now.’

You’ll have some very short interviews if you do that, because tons of people who would have been Johnny or Jane on the Spot with prepared answers to your interview questions won’t have a lucid response to your open-ended ‘Tell me what you think based on what you know’ overture. They won’t have researched your company, or if they have, they won’t have anything interesting to say about you. The switched-on people will have all kinds of insights, but if you don’t ask for them, you won’t get them — and of course, in that case you also won’t deserve them.”

“I love it,” said Cara. “If I were you, I’d talk to your HR people about that behavioral interviewing malarkey,” I said. “All the old HR practices are falling away these days. It’s a human world and a human workplace now. Talent is in the driver’s seat, whether your company can get its mind around that notion or not. If you want sharp employees in your company, you’re going to have to be human with them, even before the job interview.”

“That can’t be a bad thing,” Cara said.

Reinventing job interviews (not to mention the whole interviewing process – not to mention the entire recruiting paradigm, and nearly all HR and management practices) isn’t something you can do overnight, but it isn’t rocket science. You just have to think like a human being.

If you were one of the sharpest job candidates around (as undoubtedly you are) what sort of conversation would you want to have with the people who may be working alongside you a few weeks hence? You’d want to talk about real issues on the ground, and understand what was working for them and where they were running into problems. Keeping all that juicy stuff out of the job interview because it’s dirty laundry or because it would be stooping to ask advice of a lowly job seeker isn’t just fear-based and juvenile. It’s also a business practice that’s bad for business – and who can afford practices like that?

Liz: I’ve written about this topic several times. Interviews are to determine if the candidate is the right person for the position and the organization. Employers need to have a deep understanding of the organization’s culture and develop questions that will identify candidates that truly fit. When a person fits turnover goes down. Behavioral interviews are simply not effective at determining cultural fit.

Liz Ryan is a former Fortune 500 HR executive and the CEO of Human Workplace, an online community and consulting firm focused on reinventing work and career education. She is working with the Denver Post to bring the best expert advice on work place issues and tips to improve your career. Note: Liz Ryan was selected for her expertise, but her opinions are solely her own. We are not endorsing or advocating her business.